Far From the Madding Crowd Quotes

“To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can’t show off in that way by herself, I shan’t marry—at least not yet.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?'

'That's the very thing I say to myself,' said Gabriel.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“I don't see why a maid should take a husband when she's bold enough to fight her own battles,”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a consciousnesss that love was encircling her like a perfume.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Love, though added emotion, is substracted capacity”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself. It is often flung out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst strong, required no enunciation to prove it so.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The real sin ma'am, in my mind lies in thinking of ever wedding with a man you don't love honest and true.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“O, how I wish I had never seen him! Loving is misery for women always.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such a majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite alone.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's . . . on morals.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me- for him or anyone else.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“When farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread, till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“When the love-led man had ceased from his labours Bathsheba came and looked him in the face.

'Gabriel, will you you stay on with me?' she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end, because there was going to be another smile soon.

'I will,' said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales——Full of sound and fury
—signifying nothing—he said no word at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the starry sky. They were the notes of Oak´s flute. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the hedge - a shephard´s hut - now presenting an outline to which an unintiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. ... Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. ... Oak´s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied tha his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static. ... Oak was an intensely human man: indee, his humanity tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock should end in mutton - that a day could find a shepherd an arrant traitor to his gentle sheep.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd